1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transmission/reception system, recording apparatus and method, a providing apparatus and method, and a computer program and, more particularly, to a transmission/reception system, recording apparatus and method, a providing apparatus and method, and a computer program that are configured to enhance the degree of freedom in the use of content while minimizing the chance of easy duplication of content.
2. Description of the Related Art
The copyright information associated with current digital broadcast programs (or content) is defined by a digital copy control descriptor inserted in a PMT (Program Map Table) of PSI (Program Specific Information) that is multiplexed with each transport stream.
Namely, the digital copy control descriptor is used for each content right holder to send the information associated with content copy to a receiving device. The copyright information to be defined by digital copy control descriptor includes “copy free” (copy enabled without restriction), “copy never” (copy disabled) and “copy once” (copy enabled only once).
For example, with a hybrid-type recording apparatus incorporating a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) drive, if “copy once” content is recorded to the HDD, it is regarded at that moment that the content has been copied in “copy once” mode and the CCI (Copy Control Information) of that content is set to copy disabled status. The CCI is the information associated with the restriction of copy of each piece of content in the recording apparatus.
Therefore, the user subsequently can view the content reproduced from the HDD but cannot copy the content to a DVD to view on an external player, for example. The current digital broadcasting prevents content from being copied as described above.
The recording capacity of the HDD is necessarily limited. If a HDD is fully recorded with content, an excess piece of content may be copied to another recording media such as a removable media to delete the copied content from the HDD, thereby creating a free space for recording on the HDD. However, some pieces of content cannot be copied because of any of the above-mentioned copy restrictions.
To circumvent the above-mentioned problem, a technique called “move” may be used.
The move technique is used to copy “copy once” content for example recorded to a HDD to a recording media such as DVD and a Blue-ray Disk (trademark) for example and, the copied part of the content on the HDD is realtime deleted or invalidated; when the copying has all been completed, the copied content on the HDD is all deleted or invalidated, thereby making the copied content unavailable on the HDD while leaving one piece of copied content available on the copy destination recording media (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-16725).
This technique allows the user to copy even “copy once” content from a HDD to another recording media, thereby allowing the recording media copied with the content (or the recording media to which the content has been moved) to be loaded onto another player for use of the content on other than the HDD.
However, in spite of the recent availability of various types of recording media, “copy once” content can be moved only to one recording media, thereby significantly lowering user convenience in the handling of content.
If the copy enabled count is simply increased to enhance the user convenience, the easy copying by the user may be incurred, thereby putting content right holders at a disadvantage.
Therefore, the present invention addresses the above-identified and other problems associated with related-art methods and apparatuses and solves the addressed problems by significantly enhancing the degree of freedom in the use of content by the user while preventing the easy copying of content by the user.